Something About You
by Hermonthis
Summary: Dark Ace/Piper - "Someday, he would like to see her in that white research coat. White is a good colour on her." Warnings for innuendo and visual metaphors.


A/N: Just an exercise to write some DA/Piper. I just kind of rambled on from potential!smut to crystals and motorcycles. 

**Something About You**

* * *

He dreams about her, dreams that are so delightful, pleasurable, and surreal that they are more akin to fantasies than dreams. Face-down on his pillow, his brow is covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Pushing back his thick, black hair, he takes a deep breath and decides to smother himself against the sheets. 

This morning, he dreams she was in his bed. Not this one, but a king-sized bed, large and luxurious, dressed in red satin sheets in a candle-lit room. The dark shades of crimson go well with her skin – this illusion of her far more exotic and delectable than she actually was. He knows her name and he knows her hands, but cannot see her face. He can't look at her directly in his dreams, half-afraid that if he does, the fantasy bubble that allows his imagination to fabricate such a satisfying story will shatter like a dropped sugar-spun ball. It's too delicate to handle roughly, and too precious to him to let it go.

Every day he gets up, takes a shower, and pours himself a cup of coffee. The days pass by, one varying from the next depending whether he needs to buy groceries or not, and whether there are errands the Sky Council needs him to do. The people in his neighbourhood leave him alone, wary of his past and of his loyalty. But he's paid his dues and living with an official pardon, and the Dark Ace was not eager to reclaim his past anytime soon.

In the afternoon, if weather permits, he spends it outside working on his vehicle. He lives in the country now, surrounded in an adequate-sized community whose main source of production was agriculture. His house is located on the outskirts of town, close to a creek and next to several acres of orchards. The climate was mostly temperate, and was well known for its spring-like ambiance for most of the year.

It is such a far cry from the heavily industrialized and barren Cyclonia. It's still a wonder why the Sky Council, after declaring him guilty of war crimes, would permit him to live in a place so different from his homeland- in a manner of speaking. Atmosia might have been his land of birth, but Cyclonia was his home. At least, it used to. On the verge of his fourth year of self-imposed exile after his pardon, Dark Ace still longs to see the craggy peaks of the Cyconian Empire. But that place no longer exists, and he swore he would never go back.

This is how he spends his weeks and years. Passing through the days like a reclusive shadow among the blossom-laden trees and leaving dark tracks in the snow when winter finally arrived for its brief three-month spell.

He still dreams of her at night. He waits for her to drift into his sleep and fall on the bed beside him. She envelops him in her dark-toned arms and he smells the shampoo in her shadowy-blue hair. Sometimes they don't do much. Just cuddle. On other nights his pulse races so fast he thinks his heart will burst out of his chest and he might die right there in his dream. He loves it when she massages his scalp, chatting endlessly while he dozes on her lap. She hums.

Dark Ace knows that it is all a dream. This woman-child he has come to rely on to survive does not exist. She has a name, but it is not her. In truth, he doesn't want to know her and she doesn't know him, not in this way. He has never caressed her body, never made love to it, and the small hands that touch every little scar on his chest are a lie. Her name is Piper- she who belongs to the Storm Hawks, who is second-in-command to Aerrow, the Sky Knight.

Only once did he come in contact with the real Piper, and that was through the local newspaper. He sits at the kitchen table, listening to the sound of bacon and eggs sizzling on the frying pan. He turns the page and her face pops out at him, startling him so bad he upsets his coffee and it splashes all over the newsprint.

The headline boasts of her advancements in crystal technology and the upcoming award she was to receive. She is one of the most cherished scientists of her time. Dark Ace dumps the contents of his mug into the sink before flattening out the paper on the table to dry.

And there she is- Piper. The woman he's been dreaming of. Although the photo is reproduced in grey, he easily substitutes it with the natural shades of her hair and the colour of her eyes. She's smiling, the corners of her mouth on the verge of laughing, and she looks happy. After staring at her picture for nearly seven minutes, he folds it up and almost throws it into the trash. The Piper of his dreams doesn't look like her: she was more mature, suave, and feminine. His Piper was a woman. This other Piper still looked like a child, despite the nagging fact she would be closer to leaving her teens and was probably more mature than he was giving her credit for.

That night, he went to bed expecting warm arms to creep up behind his shoulders and lock themselves around his chest. The sound of her breathing against the back of his neck. But there was no one. She didn't reappear until three months later. He was almost dead by then. After that incident, Dark Ace knew he could never interchange the real girl with his dream woman.

Until one day, she arrives unannounced at your door.

No one is more surprised than she when he doesn't slam the door against her nose and asks her to come inside. Sit down. They have no previous amicable connections, no one can say they are friends. But there is a question– well, several questions – that she wants to ask so she tracks down his name in the civilian registers and looks up his terra. She works alone, preparing her courage and makes up biting remarks for her protection. She is determined to visit him alone.

There is a tension in the room and it is so thick she imagines long ropes cornering off sections of his house, acting as multiple barriers to his personality and private life. Here– that soft green one leads to the living room and the ocean blue is the bathroom. But there is a shiny red ribbon around him, it wraps tightly around his torso and it loops around every door of the house, goes through every room, until there is no place to walk without running into it. It seems to caress him, but it is choking her.

He offers her something to drink. Coffee? Tea? Not much of a drinker, she chooses the former. She has always been fond of the aroma of fresh ground Arabica beans in the morning, but rarely tastes the stuff. In her attempt to appear more grown-up in the face of her former enemy, she fails when she takes a sip and almost drops it when it scalds her tongue.

He laughs, and Piper feels absolutely idiotic.

"Here," he says and holds the creamer above her mug. Curious, her eyes meet his and he grimaces, does she want cream or not? Nodding, she watches the white fluid spill over the lip and form a small waterfall before splashing into the black coffee. The milk swirls around in the most hypnotizing manner; she stares into the dark chocolate whorls, slipping into meditation- until his heavy gaze shocks her back into reality.

Her first attempt; and she failed to make a favourable impression. Smirking, he remarks, "If you aren't going to drink that, maybe you should take tea instead."

When she goes home that night, she throws several pillows about her living room and shrieks loudly to let relieve the pent-up tension inside her. Frustrated, Piper prepares a drink and glares at the stove while she waits for the kettle to boil.

That was the difference between them. She was trying so hard to do something right, and he knocks it all down with a single comment.

After that incident, Piper becomes a regular tea drinker. She hasn't given up on her questions, and her research with crystals is still full-steam ahead. Her family, the Storm Hawks, is still here and when they pick her up to celebrate the winter solstice together Piper surprises them all by introducing them to the wonders of Masala chai. Fragrant, spicy, and sweet, they all fall in love with it as she expects them to.

A month later, she is back at his door, bundled up in a cheerful purple coat trimmed with white and a wrapped package in her gloved hands. It is barely one o'clock and he has forgotten all about her.

"Here," he says stoically and shoves a large white mug her way. She watches him open the cupboard to reach for something to drink– he wonders if she still hasn't figured out the joys of a hot beverage- when she interrupts his thoughts and says that if he doesn't mind, she brought a little something with her.

He likes the tea. It is not something he expected, and yet it is undeniably her. Working up her courage, Piper aims to ask her first question tonight, and by the look on his face, she knows she will be successful.

It's getting dark outside, and there might be a snowstorm. The generous host in him suggests she stay the night (will she stay? will she refuse?), while the other rallies up its defenses and screams and throws a tantrum. So Dark Ace cuts her visit short and quickly ushers her out the door and away from the swirling snow, thanking her for the tea impatiently. To his surprise, she reaches into her jacket and pushes the package she had been carrying into his hands before leaving. Thank god for her gloved hands. He is still afraid of touching her.

As she takes off and flies away, she sees a wide, red ribbon tying up the entire house.

The trees shake off the snow, the seasons change, and the brook beside Dark Ace's house is overflowing with cold, icy water. She is back in his house, she is getting her answers, and he is fast-falling-in-love with her.

It wasn't until he heard her high, ear-piercing laugh that he knows he has crossed into her world. It gives him a headache and makes him want to grind his teeth, but secretly he's proud to make her laugh. Piper is happy, it's obvious. She wears her emotions on her sleeve. She sits at the table, recalling her last mishap in the crystal lab. The corners of his mouth quirk up as he re-imagines the scene with her. Someday, he would like to see her in that white research coat. White is a good colour on her.

Piper is very careful with her laugh, more so with her giggle. He remembers the first time he heard it. Whipping his head quickly and saw her hands fly to her mouth, shutting in the sound, stiffling it completely. Why? Confused, the rising blush on her cheeks give her away and Dark Ace locates the emerging adult in the child.

"Sorry," she stutters, covering up her indiscretion with a poorly-placed cough and falls back on her calm, collected smile while he resumes his narration.

Piper knows her giggle is characteristically feminine and childish. And in a world full of men and science, in order to be treated as an adult she has to separate the girl from the woman she wants to be. She has to be independent and learn things on her own, especially crystals.

And crystals are the reason why she's here with him. It was a difficult topic to approach, and one that affected both of them emotionally (although they would never admit it to the other person), but Piper has to know if the late Master Cyclonis departed any of her knowledge to him or left any books behind. Cyclonia was out of bounds for most civilians, the Empire was declared unsafe after the machines that brought the nation up into glory proved to be their undoing. The palace was gone – the mountain which held it up fell into the wastelands below.

Those first meetings were perilous; Piper couldn't be sure how he would react. To be fair, Dark Ace had separated that part of himself and his former master, pushing the memories away from his heart and out of his body, especially during that first year and a particularly bad winter season. He remembers pushing it out of the house and banishing it into the black woods outside, cursing his memories the entire time. The red ribbons started to appear soon after.

The days are getting longer and sometimes, she comes by in the morning and watches him repair his old Switchblade. He is constantly repairing it, trying to improve it by interchanging one part with the other, but ultimately going back to the original design. Dark Ace is glad for her company, but forbids her to lay a hand on the seat or help him in his tinkering. This is one part of him that she cannot touch, no matter how much she wants to. It is ingrained so deeply into his past life and Piper doesn't want to break the friendship between them by facing the thing that reflects the power-hungry warrior he once was. If she looks at it directly, the image of the man she has come to know might break.

By this time, the different coloured ropes that used to close her off slowly opens up. She lifts them up and looks inside- sometimes they disappear and reappear on their own. Dark Ace has gotten used to her questions, and it delights her when he takes an interest in her studies. She brings some of her lesser crystals – he may be interested, but not that much – and laughs at her badly performed magic shows. He knows not to take her too seriously, and she helps to lighten the mood.

He has stopped dreaming about her by the end of summer. She no longer comes to visit him at night. Instead, he's replaced the face of the imaginary woman with the real one, and her name is Piper. The first fit isn't always right, and the flaws are painfully real, but he is slowly coming to accept that. Dark Ace understands now. He cherishes the knock on his door that lets him know she's there, and the way she bustles around his kitchen already knowing where everything is.

In the future, she will accidentally brush the back of her hand against his chest in her attempt to grab a pair of mugs. He will be standing behind her, reaching for the tea. She will freeze at the physical contact and his pulse will start to race. And when this moment happens, he will stop, take one of his hands and reach for hers, and give it a small squeeze. She will giggle in her awkwardness and he will shrug it off.

And the red ribbons loosen their hold.


End file.
